Dancing Through Wyoming

Dancing Through Wyoming

More than 100 years ago, politicians danced when they went to Wyoming. There was no getting around it—if you wanted to represent the will of the people, you had to shake your groove thang. This
according to an ancient article in
The New York Times
(PDF), which tells us that Wyoming politics used to be a "
terpsichorean
" affair. The details are too fantastic not to quote at length:

The chief factor in this pre-election gayety is that whenever there is to be a speaking by the aspirants to office it is always the custom to have a dance that same night. Hundreds of people turn out to hear the spellbinders, not because they love the oratory so much as that they are keenly bent on the terpsichorean festivities that come after the shades of night have fallen.

Clinton will probably downplay the loss by saying Obama can win in red states but not big, blue states important in the general election. We’re still trying to understand this logic, as
new polls by SurveyUSA
confirm that almost all big blue states will still back Obama in the general election. Obama, meanwhile, will try and say that his success in red states brings new Democrats into the process, which could benefit the party's ticket in November. There’s little proof of that in those SurveyUSA polls, as well. That’s why they call spin
spin
.

Wyoming is a useful example of what red-state Democrats would think if the campaign were shaped only by the media. Neither candidate had high-profile endorsements in the state (the governor
doesn’t like either candidate
), there were no polls taken, and the
candidates only spent one day there
. Voters most likely made decisions based on what they saw on TV and read from wire copy in the papers.

Or maybe they tapped into their state’s history and judged who would be the better dancer. We’ve

before Iowa that proclaimed "Dancing is hard, Caucusing is easy." What Clinton didn’t realize, of course, is that sometimes the two are intertwined. In Wyoming, maybe caucusing was hard on Clinton because she didn’t hit the discotheque after her stump speech. Lucky for her, she can hang up her dancing shoes. There aren’t any caucuses left on the primary calendar.

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